East of West #11

Eleven:  The Wall Beckons
written by Jonathan Hickman
art by Nick Dragotta
colors by Frank Martin

It's easy to forget that, though the Chosen hold powerful political positions (with one notable exception) in their respective nations, they are not, strictly speaking, official ambassadors.  Their conspiracy of apocalyptic zealots, Machiavellian power-mongers, and slippery political officials was always a shadowy operation, conducted quietly and obscurely.  If "Above All, Few Are Chosen" was the convocation of conspirators at the heart of the Armistice, "The Wall Beckons" is the diplomatic assembly of nations at the boundary of Armistice.  The cast is admittedly much the same, but the discrepancies are very telling.

Following Death's invasion of her father's country, Xiaolian now rules the People's Republic of America as premier, and the summit is assembled at her invitation.  President Burkhart of the Confederacy accompanies Chamberlain, and the others have similarly brought diplomatic seconds.  Ezra, Keeper of the Message, does not attend.  But it is the absence of Cheveyo, an exile from his nation, an outcast for his religious fervor, that strikes so pointedly.

The structure of East of West has pinged around Hickman's commuted North American geography, following Death's hunt and the conspirators themselves.  Individual issues often feature portraits of each territory:  "Above All, Few are Chosen" briefly in the Confederacy, "The House of Mao" and "Last Days of Dead Men" in the People's Republic, "To Do Justly, and To Love Mercy" in the Texas Republic, "The Pilgrimage" at Armistice, "The Street Is Burning" in the Union, and "A Kingdom of Riches" in New Orleans.  East of West has been inconspicuously silent about the Endless Nation.  "The Wall Beckons" announces them with style.

"What makes one sovereign state better than another?  Is it having fractionally more money...or power...or influence?  Yes.  Of course it is.  Is it having a greater power to destroy?  Or to build?  Yes.  That also.  Each head of state here represents some various measure of each of those things in some other varying degree...But one has more than all the others.  You asked me earlier, who here should concern you...most?  Well, there's your answer, Mister President.  Take a good look...The Endless Nation has arrived."  (East of West #11: 23-24)

While East of West #11 neglects to propel the story too far, it's a fine reorientation to this world, one that accounts for a shift in perspective away from the Message and away from Death's vendetta.  It gives familiar characters new, sometimes humorous, beats—John Freeman and Antonia LeVay, notably—and it introduces new ones with flourish.  It also discloses, albeit obliquely, the location of the Oracle's second eye:  a wooden box on Archibald Chamberlain's desk in the Black Towers.

[April 2014]